Reopening Colo. mountain road a herculean task

Feb. 6, 2014
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A helicopter belonging to Silverton Mountain Ski Area carries steel netting to be used to stabilize a massive rock slide on Red Mountain Pass that has closed Highway 550 for weeks. / Gunnar Conrad for USA TODAY

by Ryan Maye Handy, USA TODAY

by Ryan Maye Handy, USA TODAY

SILVERTON, Colo. - Five men, no strangers to the rugged rock formations and mountain passes of America's Southwest, stood on the edge of a newly formed, 900-foot-tall cliff.

Days earlier, below where the men stood, a rock slab the size of a football field and 25 feet thick fractured, sending boulders big enough to crush cars crashing onto the highway. No one was injured, but the rock slide buried a stretch of U.S. Route 550 under 8 feet of rock, indefinitely closing a strip of highway crucial to Silverton, Ouray and other small towns in Colorado's San Juan Mountains.

Since the rock slide closed the highway Jan. 12, workers have struggled to stabilize the rock face and reopen the road in an area known for treacherous mountain passes. This is the longest closure of U.S. 550 because of a rock slide in anyone's memory. Almost a month later, the road has been opened for only four hours a day to traffic and otherwise remains closed while crews work on the rock face.

From North Carolina to Alaska, rock slides, avalanches and severe weather plague mountain roads. In Colorado, some roads such as Independence Pass leading to Aspen are closed in the winter. Other roads, key byways into remote communities, must be kept open at all costs. While residents in Silverton and Ouray wait for U.S. 550 to reopen full time, Alaskans in the remote town of Valdez celebrated this week when their only road in and out reopened two weeks after a dozen avalanches shut it down.

Rock slides are typically easier to clean up and protect against than avalanches, says Mike Coffey, chief of statewide maintenance and operations for the Alaska Department of Transportation. But cleaning up a rock slide can be far more costly than getting rid of avalanche debris, which can be crushed and more easily removed

"Anywhere where you have roads through large mountains - through the Rockies, Colorado, Montana, Utah - they are just prone to avalanches and are just prone to rockfall," Coffey says.

This section of U.S. 550 crosses Red Mountain Pass, connecting the old mining towns of Silverton and Ouray. It's known as the Million Dollar Highway - named, legend has it, for what it cost to build, beginning in 1883. The narrow, cliff-hugging road intimidates even the locals who have driven it for decades. As it snakes through the mountains, it climbs in stretches to more than 11,000 feet in elevation. None of its hairpin turns, overlooking some sheer drop-offs, has guardrails.

The five men atop the towering cliff work for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). They hooked their harnesses to ropes set up by professional rock climbers and walked up the cliff face. It was faster - only 20 minutes each way - and less expensive than regularly being flown by helicopter to the top of the cliff.

"Something of this size is definitely unprecedented," says Bob Group, a rockfall specialist for the CDOT and one of the first to perch on the cliff.

Silverton and Ouray prospered when they were founded in the 1860s and 1870s. When Colorado's mining industry began to decline in the 1970s and 1980s, so did the towns' populations. Their economies today are fed by tourists. In the winter, Silverton, population 300, relies on skiers, and in the summer on thousands of tourists brought to town by the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. Ouray, which has just more than 1,000 residents, has a renowned ice-climbing championship.

Residents of the San Juans live with the risk that an avalanche or rock slide could close their main highway, sapping local businesses.

Reopening the road is the work of 12 men responsible for making the rock wall secure again. With a mixture of climbing and engineering skills, they have spent the past weeks hanging 640-pound wire nets on the rock face. Their first challenge was to negotiate the 900-foot climb where the nets would hang.

While they stabilized the rock - kicking off loose boulders, using helicopters to hang the nets - they battled wind, rapid temperature drops and the risk of another slide. When the helicopter made its rounds, the crew watched nervously as the blades whirled 20 feet from the cliff when the nets were dropped.

As of earlier this week, the project has cost the state $670,000.

While the work progressed, CDOT employee Greg Stacy watched from 900 feet below, searching through binoculars for specks on the mountain that were men.

"I want them off that mountain so I can sleep at night," he says. "The more people you get up there, the higher the risk."

The rock walls that flank U.S. 550 are not entirely solid. They move slightly as they freeze and thaw; when they shift, rock slides happen.

"It looks like it's solid, but there's billions of cracks," says Stacy, gesturing at the rock in all directions. "The water gets in there and freezes, expands and pushes the rock out."

Three weeks after the Jan. 12 rock slide, some of Silverton's business owners have decided to close temporarily.

"It's cut our business way, way, way down," says Claudia Moe, an accountant for most businesses in Silverton.

Even when the road reopens, the threat of another shutdown will persist. A large snowstorm could trigger an avalanche cycle, Donovan says.

As the crew worked last weekend, they heard thunderous echoes in the mountains - unseasonably warm weather had triggered another remote rock slide. The constant danger has Silverton residents worried for the town's future.

"My fear is that it will put the fear of the road in people's minds," Moe says. "And you know, it is something maybe to have in the back of your mind, but a lot of roads in Colorado are bad. I just don't want it to keep people from ever coming here."

Handy also reports for the Fort Collins (Colo.) Coloradoan. Contributing: The Associated Press.